Getting to Know Your Inner World - 011 Detaching via Awareness of Your Limits, Part Five

Imagination – Evil “Endlessness”

We have explained previously that our middos/emotions have two parts to them – the middos themselves, and medameh/imagination.

The imagination expands the middos for evil uses. Middos are really measured and limited, but imagination comes and exaggerates them.

For example, a person has the ability of ratzon/will.  Ratzon itself consists of two layers: it can be a desire to be connected to the endlessness of Hashem, which is its “unlimited” aspect, but it can also be a limited kind of desire, which is its “limited” aspect. The inner layer of ratzon is to want connection to the Unlimited, but the outer layer of ratzon is to have limited retzonos. Both can be good kinds of desires.

A person’s power of imagination, though, comes and expands a middah – and it breaks rules in doing so. A good kind of middah is limited, and it is rooted in the limited ratzon. But when a person wants to be unlimited, such middos are stemming from the imagination.  This is not the same kind of desire for the unlimited which is rooted in ratzon. It is an evil kind of wanting to be unlimited.

The root of being unlimited is not evil; it is a desire to connect to the Ein Sof of Hashem. But imagination (after the sin of Adam) is a force in a person that uses the desire for endlessness in an evil way.

This is the root of the discussion.

Ratzon – The Root of Middos/Emotions

Usually, these two forces are going on at the same time. Whenever a person feels an emotion, he has a ratzon for it. A general kind of willpower is called ratzon, while a will for a certain emotion is called a middah. Thus, the reality of all middos is really a revelation of our ratzon.

However, after Adam sinned, reality changed, and now there are two things contained in our middos – our ratzon, and our medameh/imagination. The imagination comes and expands the ratzon of the middah, and this makes the person want the middah as well as the medameh – and this is the root of evil. It is essentially the yetzer hora (evil inclination). Usually, most of a person’s middos are following his imagination, and the middos have become subservient to the imagination.

Thus, the general rule when it comes to working on our middos is that when we don’t uncover the limits of a middah, the middos are being led by imagination, which is the evil kind of “endlessness”. We need to thus detach from the unlimited part of our middos and instead place limits on each middah.

A person who wants to work on his middos thus needs to realize how his imagination is leading him, and thus he has to make limits for his middos. The imagination is like the “ruach shtus that enters a person”[1] and gets him to sin.

When we work on our middos, there are two parts to it. There are the middos themselves – and the imagination in it. If so, there is a limited aspect and an unlimited aspect in our middos. Thus, we need to “wear” and “remove” our limited aspect and our unlimited aspects, and this is also part of the cycle of wearing and removing our soul garments.

Since all of our middos have both limited and unlimited aspects in them, let us go through how each middah can be limited and unlimited.

How Emunah Can Be Limited and Unlimited

The first soul faculty, emunah, can be unlimited in that a person has emunah in Hashem, who is endless. But there is also emunah in something limited, like when a person believes that his income is limited.

When a person wants to wear and remove emunah, he has to believe in both its limited and unlimited aspect. When a person has emunah in the endlessness of Hashem, he connects himself to the unlimited, and this removes him from being limited. When a person believes in his limits, like when he realizes that his income is limited, he removes himself from the unlimited and connects to the limited. Both of these abilities are necessary to use and then remove, remove and then use, and so forth.

How Taanug Can Be Limited and Unlimited

The next soul faculty is ta’anug. There is ta’anug in something unlimited and something limited, and we need to make use of both abilities.

A person was created for unlimited taanug, which is to “have pleasure in Hashem.”

Usually, all middos/emotions stem from our ratzon/willpower, but there are some emotions we go through which are rooted in ta’anug. For example, when a person gets angry, this is rooted in his ratzon; he has a ratzon to get angry. But when a person feels a desire (taavah) for something, this emotion is rooted in ta’anug. A person is either experiencing an emotion due to his ratzon/will for it (and this is the usual case) or because he has an enjoyment (ta’anug) in it.

There is unlimited ta’anug and limited ta’anug, and both of them need to be “worn” and “removed” when necessary.

A person has to first recognize within himself his ta’anug in something endless, which is the ta’anug that the soul wants to have in Hashem. Without first recognizing this kind of ta’anug, a person won’t be able to divest himself from endless ta’anug to limited ta’anug.

The real ta’anug is rooted in our ratzon, but there are other kinds of ta’anug which come from the imagination; these are our imaginary pleasures.

If a person learns how to divest himself from imaginary pleasure, he can connect to the real ta’anug, which is ta’anug in the reality. For example, when a person connects to ta’anug in his emunah, he is connected to real ta’anug, because this is pleasure in reality – the reality of Hashem.

Limited Ratzon and Unlimited Ratzon

We have already spoken in the beginning of this chapter about how to detach from limited ratzon and unlimited ratzon. When a person has an unlimited kind of desire for something, he awakens his imagination; when a person has a limit to what he wants, he is using the actual middah of ratzon.

Limited Chochmah and Unlimited Chochmah

There is also limited and “unlimited” chochmah. When a person thinks that his chochmah is unlimited, his chochmah is stemming from his imagination. A person has to detach from this by connecting to the chochmah of Torah, which disconnects him from imagination and shows him the limits of his chochmah.

When a person delves into learning Torah – even when he is learning a possuk in Chumash – he disconnects from imagination, connecting him to the real middah of chochmah, which is limited.

Limited and Unlimited Binah

Binah can also be limited and “unlimited”. Binah is to produce information, while imagination makes up new information upon seeing something. Imagination is not a logical kind of comparison a person makes – it “sees” something and upon that, it comes up with something new. Only Binah is an accurate kind of comparison that is based on logic.

In learning Torah, a person can detach from imagination by seeing if what he has come up with something based on his logic, or only because he “saw” something. Real hisbonenus (reflection) is based on logic, while information that one’s imagination has come up with comes from something that the person has seen.

Detaching from the Middos/Emotions and Connecting to Thought

A person has a heart and a mind, which are called the “two kings” in a person. Our life needs to incorporate both, as we said before. Sometimes we need to detach even from our heart! Our middos/emotions are rooted in our heart. There are times in which we need to detach from our heart and instead connect to our thinking mind.

If a person never learns how to detach from his heart, he will never have yishuv hadaas (a settled mind), unless his heart is so purified that he is on the level in which he never has to detach from it.

Many people have a lot of feelings, and they have a problem because of their great amount of feelings; they don’t know how to detach from their feelings. The Gemara says that people who are overly caring have a life that isn’t considered a life.[2] Some people have the opposite problem: their emotions are so closed up that they are only intellectual, devoid of any feeling. Their feelings are all closed up. That is also a problem, but right now we are discussing the problem of people who are too emotional.

Chazal say that “the Torah wants the heart.” People who are “heart people”, who know about this statement of Chazal, will understand it to mean that everything is always about the heart. Such an attitude is off balance. Although the feelings of our heart are essential, we cannot always be involved with our heart. We need to be detached from it sometimes and instead connect to our intellect.

Detaching from the Middos: An Introduction

There are seven primary middos/emotions.

We need to learn how to detach from the middos themselves – not just to detach from the middos and connect to the higher faculties of speech and thought, but to detach from the middos within the middos themselves. Meaning, we can detach from each of the middos separately.

The Three Abilities of the Heart

To be general, there are three abilities in our heart: (1) Hergashah (feelings), (2) Hispaalus (Emotional reactions, otherwise known as hisorerus/inspiration), and (3) Hakarah (recognition).

The first two abilities (feeling and reaction/inspiration) are more or less known to us, while the third ability, hakarah, is usually more hidden from us,

We must understand that these are all separate abilities in our heart. If we do not see the difference between these abilities, we will be very mixed up and we cannot proceed further. With the help of Hashem, we hope to continue how to wear and detach our middos, after we are clearly recognize these three abilities of our heart.